How America's most dangerous criminals mix with a Who's Who of the global jihad in a Colorado prison

Highway 50 runs straight as a pool cue from Pueblo, Colo., through 23 miles of rangeland and piñon flats before offering an exit to the scruffy little city of Florence (pop. 3,795). Like Flint, Mich., or Orlando, Fla., Florence is a company town. The industry here is prisoners, and the company is the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Twenty years ago, the people of surrounding Fremont County ponied up $160,000 to buy some open land outside Florence, hoping to entice the bureau to build a prison complex as a way to boost the town's economy. Corrections had long been a mainstay in...